Thursday, December 31, 2009

This is probably my last post of this decade so wanted to share with you 5 Technology Favorites from this decade that significantly influenced our lives (mine atleast) in a good way.

Its nothing philosophical and obviously excludes family events, where we were blessed with 2 wonderful kids ... and the other defining events of this decade like 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So here's my 5 Technology Favorites from this decade ...

3G

I think in many ways 3G was the backbone of a lot of other technology trends today and I believe that it will be remembered historically kinda like the x86 architecture for PC's as the place from where all real mobility enablement started. Maybe I'm over exaggerating a little here but that's how I feel.

The first commercial launch of 3G was also by NTT DoCoMo in Japan on 1 October 2001, the second network to go commercially live was by SK Telecom in South Korea, then came the European networks and then the first commercial United States 3G network was setup by Monet Mobile Networks, on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO technology, but this network provider later shut down operations. The second 3G network operator in the USA was Verizon Wireless in October 2003 also on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO.

The Nokia 6650 was the world's first 3G phone supporting the W-CDMA 2100 MHz band a far cry from the current 3G iPhones for example. Interestingly the phone was "unlocked" ... eat that AT&T and other Telcos

iPod (and then the iPhone)

I think that this was probably the best invention/creation that came from Steve Jobs and company. Now I know Mac fanatics might chew my head off on this, but I'd say if you cant make the product #1 in its category then it'll always be good and amazing but never "great". I believe iPod delivered for Apple and Steve what they were craving for years in the PC market.

Deeming existing portable music players poorly conceived, Jobs ordered a team of his engineers and designer Jonathan Ive to develop the first iPod in under a year. Launched in October 2001, the product would go on to claim more than 70% of the digital music player market and, with its companion iTunes Music Store, revolutionize the distribution of digital music.

While the iPhone and its new touch paradigm revolutionized the smartphone market to a large extent, its impact was nowhere close to what iPod and iTunes did to the music and entertainment space.

Youtube

Not enough credit goes to this service, which has now become woven into the fabric of our lives Youtube now has a billion or more views a day and is an alternative media outlet all its own. Never does a day go by when we don't watch something interesting out there. Youtube was started in 2005 and here's the very first public Youtube video.

Facebook

Facebook is poised to change the way we interact socially with our friends, family and acquaintances (depending on who you've let into your Facebook network ;-). I know parents, grandparents, folks in villages and towns all over the world jumping on Facebook to keep in touch and find out what's happening with people they know.

You can read up on how Facebook got started here. It was started as something called Facemash on October 28, 2003 when Mark Zuckerberg was attending Harvard as a sophomore. Then he began writing code for a new website in January 2004 called "thefacebook.com". When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends. And then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was, like, three hundred people," according to roommate Dustin Moskovitz. "And, once they did that, several dozen people joined, and then they were telling people at the other houses.

So its not clear who the very first person was to get onto Facebook, so based on the Wayback Machine here's a look at what it looked like when it was launched.

Twitter caught me by surprise. I think its one of the most innovative medium for unprompted public exchange confined to "140 characters x infinity". I was already a big fan of Blogger which by the way didn't make it to this list cause it was launched in Oct 1999. Depending on how Twitter deals with things like spam etc I believe its here to stay and will be woven into the online fabric of how we interact. Here's a glimpse of the first public Tweet ever.